Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 66
November 25, 2012
City of Bones chapter 14+ Comments on Breaking Dawn
My stepfather has a strong love for the Twilight Saga.
I am not remotely kidding.
I sat through BDpt2. They cut most of the stupid out by omitting unnecessary character interactions (a'la Emmett's commentary on Bella's sex life during her post-vamping reunion with Charlie) and Bella's running commentary. Charlie got shafted, but then he got the same in the books too. You got to see Leah's profile once. Renesmee is the creepiest fucking baby in the history of CGI, is just as creepy as a toddler, and is pretty much a prop through the whole movie. Alice saves all the things, of course. Christopher Heyerdahl (AKA Marcus) needs to get a bigger part in a better movie because GOD is he wasted as an actor. Stephenie decided to show everyone who bitched about the book's ending what would really have happened had everyone thrown down (Spoiler: Carslile, Jasper, Seth *sob* Caius, Leah, Jane--VIA ALICE AND WEREWOLF IN SCENE OF SHINING AWESOME. Allowing the strongest actress and character in the movie, respectively, to have a showdown was probably a mistake--Marcus and Aro all die, as do Ed and Bella by implication.) and then undid it because dream/vision ha ha everybody lives isn't this totally better. No, Stephenie. It wasn't. I actually got emotionally involved in the war scene, which the rest of your glittery blood-sucking soap opera failed to do.
Also? One of the Romanian vampires was also Cottontop from Hatfields and McCoys, which I finally watched two days ago. Needless to say after watching that actor play a mentally disabled boy, I was unable to buy Vlad 2 as a scary individual. I kept hearing "They Hornswaggled me with Love!" and experianced the wild urge to curl up sobbing in a corner every time he opened his mouth.
So. City of Bones.
...this is the vampire chapter, isn't it? Fuck.
Now, they're supposed to go to the Hotel Dumort to get their rattified friend Simon back, but Clary and the Murder Trio are at a church instead. A Gothic church.
...in New York City. I am assuming we mean "in the gothic style" and seriously, the vampires are in a gothic church. I'll bet they have a heavy metal mass and everything.
Oh, right, they need holy stuff for fighting the vampires. Well, at least now we'll find out what makes things holy in this book, right? RIGHT?
In. The. Name. Of. Christ. You are using Angels and Demons, holy objects and now you're using a fucking church. In Jesus name. Your book will not burst into flames if you treat religion like something other than your toybox.
Clary has never been in a church before. Jace has to explain what everything is. Then he starts looking for weapons. Because all faiths have demons in them. And all churches/synegogs and whatnot keep weapons for Shadowhunters at the alter.
HEY KIDS! IT'S BIBLE STORY TIME! No, no, sit back down. It won't take more than a second. God chose the Israelites as his people. He told them to build him things like a pretty tent AKA Tabernackle, gold cups and candle holders and the Ark of the Covenant, which could have destroyed the Nazis if Indy hadn't been a pest. Now, eventually they took the tent down and put all the gold stuff into a temple. The rule was, only the preists could handle these things and only on certain days for certain reasons. One day the Babylonians came along and took most of the Hebrews and all of the shiny gold things back to Babylon with them, including God's gold things that no one but his preists were supposed to use. The king at the time respected God, because God wrecked his shit on more than one occasion, but eventually that king died and his son had to prove that he could party longer and harder than the old king ever did. So he threw a big party and gave all his guests God's gold cups to drink out of. That night God's floating hand appears and writes things on the wall. New King sends for Daniel to interprete the writing. Daniel takes one look and says "Boy are you fucked" before explaining that God is going to hand Babylon over to the Persians in the next couple of days. The Persians invade and the new king, and all his party friends, die horribly.
All because they drank out of God's gold cups. Because these cups, like the eucharist and holy water and concecrated ground (You know, the same shit Jace is depending on to protect the institute?) are all concecrated and dedicated to the use of Yheweh, aka YHVH, aka the God who has a history of wrecking your shit if you disrespect something dedicated to him.
I would CONSIDER giving Cass a pass on this, but there are angels and demons and they are depending heavily on blessed/holy objects, and she just disrespected God so hard I think if I set my bible on top of my hardcopy of this book the covers would start to smoke. You CANNOT have it both ways. If the objects in a religion have power, it is because there is a Deity behind them. If there is a Deity behind that power, that Deity will expect you to follow His/Her/Its rules. If you do not follow those rules, then the best you can hope for is that these objects you need will fail you when you need them most. The worst? Honey, God can be very creative when he is pissed off at you.
What does Jace find under the alter?
...Oh, but his DAD believes in God.
Knowing how this book ends, my level of PISSED THE FUCK OFF just went through the roof.
Jace goes on a long monologue:
That's from The Problem of Pain, and if you have any interest in Christian theology I REALLY recommend that book.
So after addressing the concept of religion in the most offensive way possible (GOD doesn't matter, just his toys!) we go on to the Hotel Dumort. It's abandoned and boarded up, so the kids break in. But only after paragraph on paragraph of the kids digging through garbage and making cutsy quips. They also collect a random Hispanic boy, because if you're in a bad neighborhood all you're gonna find are people of color and street kids.Of course, the kid is a vampire, which Jace figured out a long time ago, even though he's been muttering about how much he hates mundanes since they picked up the idiot.
The other vampires show up, they use Random Vamp Boy as a hostage to get Simon back. Jace balks at making an oath, though, because oaths are important to Shadowhunters.
And concecrated religious artifacts aren't. Right. Jace? Seriously? Go die in a fire.
And then Clary blows her own negotiations to get Simon back, right when Jace was about to swear that oath. We're approaching Strawchick level stupid here, kids.
So they're running around the ballroom, trying to escape the pissed of vampires who have been interrupted, stabbed and chewed on by rat-boy, when suddenly WEREWOLVES!
They break through the windows. And the chapter ends.
Vampires and werewolves in the same chapter I review the night I watch Twilight.
Yep, I'm gonna go get a drink now.
Next chapter: WE TALK ABOUT THINGS SOME MORE!
I am not remotely kidding.
I sat through BDpt2. They cut most of the stupid out by omitting unnecessary character interactions (a'la Emmett's commentary on Bella's sex life during her post-vamping reunion with Charlie) and Bella's running commentary. Charlie got shafted, but then he got the same in the books too. You got to see Leah's profile once. Renesmee is the creepiest fucking baby in the history of CGI, is just as creepy as a toddler, and is pretty much a prop through the whole movie. Alice saves all the things, of course. Christopher Heyerdahl (AKA Marcus) needs to get a bigger part in a better movie because GOD is he wasted as an actor. Stephenie decided to show everyone who bitched about the book's ending what would really have happened had everyone thrown down (Spoiler: Carslile, Jasper, Seth *sob* Caius, Leah, Jane--VIA ALICE AND WEREWOLF IN SCENE OF SHINING AWESOME. Allowing the strongest actress and character in the movie, respectively, to have a showdown was probably a mistake--Marcus and Aro all die, as do Ed and Bella by implication.) and then undid it because dream/vision ha ha everybody lives isn't this totally better. No, Stephenie. It wasn't. I actually got emotionally involved in the war scene, which the rest of your glittery blood-sucking soap opera failed to do.
Also? One of the Romanian vampires was also Cottontop from Hatfields and McCoys, which I finally watched two days ago. Needless to say after watching that actor play a mentally disabled boy, I was unable to buy Vlad 2 as a scary individual. I kept hearing "They Hornswaggled me with Love!" and experianced the wild urge to curl up sobbing in a corner every time he opened his mouth.
So. City of Bones.
...this is the vampire chapter, isn't it? Fuck.
Now, they're supposed to go to the Hotel Dumort to get their rattified friend Simon back, but Clary and the Murder Trio are at a church instead. A Gothic church.
...in New York City. I am assuming we mean "in the gothic style" and seriously, the vampires are in a gothic church. I'll bet they have a heavy metal mass and everything.
Oh, right, they need holy stuff for fighting the vampires. Well, at least now we'll find out what makes things holy in this book, right? RIGHT?
Jace’s profile in the moonlight was serene. “We’re not going to,” he said, sliding his stele into his pocket. He placed a thin brown hand, marked all over with delicate white scars like a veiling of lace, against the wood of the door, just above the latch. “In the name of the Clave,” he said, “I ask entry to this holy place. In the name of the Battle That Never Ends, I ask the use of your weapons. And in the name of the Angel Raziel, I ask your blessings on my mission against the darkness.”You know what? I'm actually offended. I made it through Hubbard, Gor, and the last twilight movie, and this is the shit that offends me. THIS. Yo, Cass? I accept that you have to write your book as all enclusive as possible, respecting all religions and yadda yadda yadda. The problem is that they're not going to a Druid grove or a pagan circle. They're going to a church. Churches are sanctified to a very specific deity. This Deity does not like it when you play with His toys outside of their intended use. He does not like it when you do not respect His holy ground, and He sure as horses love hey does not like it when you ask for His blessing in the name of things other than Him. These characters might not be believers--and again, if they aren't they should be SOL in the Christian holy object department--but they sure as hellfire sucks should give the Deity they are invoking the fucking courtesy of naming him.
In. The. Name. Of. Christ. You are using Angels and Demons, holy objects and now you're using a fucking church. In Jesus name. Your book will not burst into flames if you treat religion like something other than your toybox.
Clary has never been in a church before. Jace has to explain what everything is. Then he starts looking for weapons. Because all faiths have demons in them. And all churches/synegogs and whatnot keep weapons for Shadowhunters at the alter.
HEY KIDS! IT'S BIBLE STORY TIME! No, no, sit back down. It won't take more than a second. God chose the Israelites as his people. He told them to build him things like a pretty tent AKA Tabernackle, gold cups and candle holders and the Ark of the Covenant, which could have destroyed the Nazis if Indy hadn't been a pest. Now, eventually they took the tent down and put all the gold stuff into a temple. The rule was, only the preists could handle these things and only on certain days for certain reasons. One day the Babylonians came along and took most of the Hebrews and all of the shiny gold things back to Babylon with them, including God's gold things that no one but his preists were supposed to use. The king at the time respected God, because God wrecked his shit on more than one occasion, but eventually that king died and his son had to prove that he could party longer and harder than the old king ever did. So he threw a big party and gave all his guests God's gold cups to drink out of. That night God's floating hand appears and writes things on the wall. New King sends for Daniel to interprete the writing. Daniel takes one look and says "Boy are you fucked" before explaining that God is going to hand Babylon over to the Persians in the next couple of days. The Persians invade and the new king, and all his party friends, die horribly.
All because they drank out of God's gold cups. Because these cups, like the eucharist and holy water and concecrated ground (You know, the same shit Jace is depending on to protect the institute?) are all concecrated and dedicated to the use of Yheweh, aka YHVH, aka the God who has a history of wrecking your shit if you disrespect something dedicated to him.
I would CONSIDER giving Cass a pass on this, but there are angels and demons and they are depending heavily on blessed/holy objects, and she just disrespected God so hard I think if I set my bible on top of my hardcopy of this book the covers would start to smoke. You CANNOT have it both ways. If the objects in a religion have power, it is because there is a Deity behind them. If there is a Deity behind that power, that Deity will expect you to follow His/Her/Its rules. If you do not follow those rules, then the best you can hope for is that these objects you need will fail you when you need them most. The worst? Honey, God can be very creative when he is pissed off at you.
What does Jace find under the alter?
“Vials of holy water, blessed knives, steel and silver blades,” Jace said, piling the weapons on the floor beside him, “electrum wire— not much use at the moment, but it’s always good to have spare— silver bullets, charms of protection, crucifixes, stars of David—”And it turns out that Jace is an athiest. I have nothing against athiests as people who have gone through a long soul searching and found themselves unable to reconcile the concept of deity with the universe as they understand it. However, if you are an athiest raiding a church for the protection of a God you do not believe in?
...Oh, but his DAD believes in God.Knowing how this book ends, my level of PISSED THE FUCK OFF just went through the roof.
Jace goes on a long monologue:
“My father believed in a righteous God. Deus volt, that was his motto—‘ because God wills it.’ It was the Crusaders’ motto, and they went out to battle and were slaughtered, just like my father. And when I saw him lying dead in a pool of his own blood, I knew then that I hadn’t stopped believing in God. I’d just stopped believing God cared. There might be a God, Clary, and there might not, but I don’t think it matters. Either way, we’re on our own.”You know, I could go off on this one paragraph for hours. I could explain how this character is pretty obviously Cassandra Clare's mouthpiece. I could go on about how I fucking well know what Clare's opinion of Christianity is, given shit she's said online that somehow made it back to internet drama sites. I could explain why this "all religions are one but we need CATHOLIC HOLY WATER to fight vampires with" bullshit is offensive to every fucking religion on the face of the planet. I could go on about how Jace is the most infantile sociopath to stalk the universe since they electrocuted Ted Bundy. But I won't. I'm going to counter just the bolded part of that paragraph. Cassandra Clare, meet C.S. Lewis:
Not many years ago when I was an atheist, if anyone had asked me, ‘Why do you not believe in God?’ my reply would have run something like this: ‘Look at the universe we live in...The race is doomed. Every race that comes into being in any part of the universe is doomed...All stories will come to nothing: all life will turn out in the end to have been a transitory and senseless contortion upon the idiotic face of infinite matter. If you ask me to believe that this is the work of a benevolent and omnipotent spirit, I reply that all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Either there is no spirit behind the universe, or else a spirit indifferent to good and evil, or else an evil spirit.’
There was one question which I never dreamed of raising... If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? Men are fools, perhaps; but hardly so foolish as that. The direct inference from black to white, from evil flower to virtuous root, from senseless work to a workman infinitely wise, staggers belief. The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been the ground of religion: it must always have been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source, was held.
That's from The Problem of Pain, and if you have any interest in Christian theology I REALLY recommend that book.
So after addressing the concept of religion in the most offensive way possible (GOD doesn't matter, just his toys!) we go on to the Hotel Dumort. It's abandoned and boarded up, so the kids break in. But only after paragraph on paragraph of the kids digging through garbage and making cutsy quips. They also collect a random Hispanic boy, because if you're in a bad neighborhood all you're gonna find are people of color and street kids.Of course, the kid is a vampire, which Jace figured out a long time ago, even though he's been muttering about how much he hates mundanes since they picked up the idiot.
The other vampires show up, they use Random Vamp Boy as a hostage to get Simon back. Jace balks at making an oath, though, because oaths are important to Shadowhunters.
And concecrated religious artifacts aren't. Right. Jace? Seriously? Go die in a fire.
And then Clary blows her own negotiations to get Simon back, right when Jace was about to swear that oath. We're approaching Strawchick level stupid here, kids.
So they're running around the ballroom, trying to escape the pissed of vampires who have been interrupted, stabbed and chewed on by rat-boy, when suddenly WEREWOLVES!
They break through the windows. And the chapter ends.
Vampires and werewolves in the same chapter I review the night I watch Twilight.
Yep, I'm gonna go get a drink now.
Next chapter: WE TALK ABOUT THINGS SOME MORE!
Yeah, so I caved+FREE BOOK.
I have the spine of a six year old.
And technically I broke my promise to a couple of ya'll. I enrolled This Found Thing in the deal where it has to stay on amazon exclusively for three months. Good news: It'll be free tomorrow and the next day, so you won't have to screw with Amazon being, well, Amazon, any further than you have to.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's just been, well, not the best month for me in book sales, and TFT isn't going anywhere. Either it sucks, which is an acceptable probability, or it needs a bigger push than I can give it.
So tomorrow and Tuesday, This Found Thing will be free on Amazon. Ya'll can go get it now. It's free. Go on. ...well, technically, go tomorrow. But go. Read it.
Seriously. No spine. At all.
And technically I broke my promise to a couple of ya'll. I enrolled This Found Thing in the deal where it has to stay on amazon exclusively for three months. Good news: It'll be free tomorrow and the next day, so you won't have to screw with Amazon being, well, Amazon, any further than you have to.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's just been, well, not the best month for me in book sales, and TFT isn't going anywhere. Either it sucks, which is an acceptable probability, or it needs a bigger push than I can give it.
So tomorrow and Tuesday, This Found Thing will be free on Amazon. Ya'll can go get it now. It's free. Go on. ...well, technically, go tomorrow. But go. Read it.
Seriously. No spine. At all.
November 24, 2012
My Fun with Vertigo and Sushi
When I was eight years old, I was absolutely positive my grandmother was going to die. I remember sitting in front of her when it began, watching a National Geographic documentary on the Iceman. That leathery, noseless face will always be associated with physical illness and someone being in trouble. My grandmother became extreamly sick, terrifying the everloving life out of me. My father took her to the hospital. In my little young heart I knew that soon my parents would come back and tell me my grandmother had died.
But it turned out to be nothing life threatening. The first time Mom told me what it was I thought she said "Veneer's Disease" and I thought it had something to do woodworking or dental caps. It's actually called "Menier's Disease" and it means your inner ear has gone haywire. Some people get it mild, some people get it severe. My aunt contracted it a couple years ago, and I began paying attention to every little quiver my equilibrium, because my aunt and my grandma? They are exactly like me.
So when I began having sensations of vertigo two weeks ago? I got worried. Especially as it got worse, and worse. I thought maybe it was a cold, and felt a little relieved until the cold went away and the vertigo didn't. I did, however, begin to have migranes. Although I'm not sure if it is "migranes" or "week long migraine" in the singular. The last three days were horrible. I had to work on Thanksgiving, and halfway through the shift I had to sit down and put my head between my knees. I had trouble walking in a straight line and the headache seemed to have its own color and flavor. I complained about it on the blog a little bit, but not to the digree that I could have. Two weeks of feeling as if I were floating on a ship, as if the room were spinning around me. Nothing made it better, and I tried just about everything I could think of.
Of course, it's always the stuff that you don't think about that gets ya.
One dumb, stupid thing got me through Thanksgiving thursday. It was knowing that the next day, yesterday, I would get to have sushi for lunch. I eat a lot of sushi, starting from back when I was eighteen and my mom handed me a piece. It started with the baby stuff--California rolls: imitation crab meat, avacado and cucumber--but by now I've moved on to actual raw fish. And the restaurant here in town has also addicted me to edamame and miso soup. To say that I eat sushi twice a week minimum would not be an exaggeration. Friday was twice the usual reward, though, because the restaurant had been closed while the owners went on vacation.
For two weeks. Starting about five days before the vertigo started.
I made a lot of homemade sushi too, but due to transportation issues I hadn't had a chance to go to the store lately, and when I began feeling sick I didn't really feel like going out much. Looking back, I think that was fatigue talking. But the result was, I went from eating a large amount of seaweed, miso and fish, both at home and by eating out, to eating none at all. Now, I'd skipped a week or so before, but usually by the weekend I'd be willing to kill for a philidelpha roll, and I had both the grocery store, the restaurant and my own kitchen to sate the craving with. And it was an active, sometimes even urgent craving. I'd ride a couple miles in blazing sunlight to pick up a couple boxes of grocery store sushi. And it's always the same thing: Tuna, maybe some shrimp, edamame and miso. I don't have to even think about it. My stomach says WE WANT THAT ONE. NOW.
Now, some people had brought up dietary triggers, specifically soy products triggering vertigo. I shrugged and said yeah, I DID eat a lot of soy beans, but I hadn't had any for two weeks, since before the vertigo began, and that probably should have clued me in. But it didn't. It seemed so freaking STUPID, this whole idea that not eating raw fish and seaweed could be causing something so painfully debilitating, I blew it off. I just hoped that it was Meniere's disease, that the headaches and balance problems weren't an indicator of something else. My other searches for the same symptoms brought up things like meningitis and MS. I needed to go see a doctor, I figured, and I could only hope that it wouldn't be expensive, that they wouldn't order six billion tests, and that if I did have something degenerative, it'd wait for me to find a way to make money at a job that didn't require eight hours of my standing and walking.
And then I ate one meal.
By five o'clock on Friday night, I felt almost normal. Not 100% but I could walk in a straight line again, and the headache, my friends, the headache was gone. So I decided to repeat the exparament by making my own sushi for dinner. And I feel utterly, completely and entirely normal now for the first time in two and a half weeks. No headaches. Minimal vertigo.
I've done a little research, and I will be doing more, because this shit is WEIRD man, but if you google "vertigo" and "mineral deficiency" the first thing that comes up is magnesium. A quick google of sushi reveals that it's high in magnesium, plus a bunch of other things. I'm going to be reading up on this, and I'll say more when I KNOW more. Right now I'm just freaked out that eating one meal could have such a strong influence on my own body. But it's just...well, kind of cool.
And if you're having vertigo issues, drink lots of water and take magnesium pills. And maybe order a couple extra rolls the next time you go to a sushi bar.
But it turned out to be nothing life threatening. The first time Mom told me what it was I thought she said "Veneer's Disease" and I thought it had something to do woodworking or dental caps. It's actually called "Menier's Disease" and it means your inner ear has gone haywire. Some people get it mild, some people get it severe. My aunt contracted it a couple years ago, and I began paying attention to every little quiver my equilibrium, because my aunt and my grandma? They are exactly like me.
So when I began having sensations of vertigo two weeks ago? I got worried. Especially as it got worse, and worse. I thought maybe it was a cold, and felt a little relieved until the cold went away and the vertigo didn't. I did, however, begin to have migranes. Although I'm not sure if it is "migranes" or "week long migraine" in the singular. The last three days were horrible. I had to work on Thanksgiving, and halfway through the shift I had to sit down and put my head between my knees. I had trouble walking in a straight line and the headache seemed to have its own color and flavor. I complained about it on the blog a little bit, but not to the digree that I could have. Two weeks of feeling as if I were floating on a ship, as if the room were spinning around me. Nothing made it better, and I tried just about everything I could think of.
Of course, it's always the stuff that you don't think about that gets ya.
One dumb, stupid thing got me through Thanksgiving thursday. It was knowing that the next day, yesterday, I would get to have sushi for lunch. I eat a lot of sushi, starting from back when I was eighteen and my mom handed me a piece. It started with the baby stuff--California rolls: imitation crab meat, avacado and cucumber--but by now I've moved on to actual raw fish. And the restaurant here in town has also addicted me to edamame and miso soup. To say that I eat sushi twice a week minimum would not be an exaggeration. Friday was twice the usual reward, though, because the restaurant had been closed while the owners went on vacation.
For two weeks. Starting about five days before the vertigo started.
I made a lot of homemade sushi too, but due to transportation issues I hadn't had a chance to go to the store lately, and when I began feeling sick I didn't really feel like going out much. Looking back, I think that was fatigue talking. But the result was, I went from eating a large amount of seaweed, miso and fish, both at home and by eating out, to eating none at all. Now, I'd skipped a week or so before, but usually by the weekend I'd be willing to kill for a philidelpha roll, and I had both the grocery store, the restaurant and my own kitchen to sate the craving with. And it was an active, sometimes even urgent craving. I'd ride a couple miles in blazing sunlight to pick up a couple boxes of grocery store sushi. And it's always the same thing: Tuna, maybe some shrimp, edamame and miso. I don't have to even think about it. My stomach says WE WANT THAT ONE. NOW.
Now, some people had brought up dietary triggers, specifically soy products triggering vertigo. I shrugged and said yeah, I DID eat a lot of soy beans, but I hadn't had any for two weeks, since before the vertigo began, and that probably should have clued me in. But it didn't. It seemed so freaking STUPID, this whole idea that not eating raw fish and seaweed could be causing something so painfully debilitating, I blew it off. I just hoped that it was Meniere's disease, that the headaches and balance problems weren't an indicator of something else. My other searches for the same symptoms brought up things like meningitis and MS. I needed to go see a doctor, I figured, and I could only hope that it wouldn't be expensive, that they wouldn't order six billion tests, and that if I did have something degenerative, it'd wait for me to find a way to make money at a job that didn't require eight hours of my standing and walking.
And then I ate one meal.
By five o'clock on Friday night, I felt almost normal. Not 100% but I could walk in a straight line again, and the headache, my friends, the headache was gone. So I decided to repeat the exparament by making my own sushi for dinner. And I feel utterly, completely and entirely normal now for the first time in two and a half weeks. No headaches. Minimal vertigo.
I've done a little research, and I will be doing more, because this shit is WEIRD man, but if you google "vertigo" and "mineral deficiency" the first thing that comes up is magnesium. A quick google of sushi reveals that it's high in magnesium, plus a bunch of other things. I'm going to be reading up on this, and I'll say more when I KNOW more. Right now I'm just freaked out that eating one meal could have such a strong influence on my own body. But it's just...well, kind of cool.
And if you're having vertigo issues, drink lots of water and take magnesium pills. And maybe order a couple extra rolls the next time you go to a sushi bar.
November 23, 2012
City of Bones Chapter 13
You know, one thing that still bothers me about this book? How much talking everybody does. In the first chapter the Murder Trio and their victim exposited about things they had no earthly reason to talk about--EVERYONE WANTS TO KILL EACH OTHER--so that Clary can understand. In chapter two Clary and her mother talked about how unfair life is, and how they have a sudden burning need to be anywhere else in the world, other than right here. In chapter three, Clary and Jace talked. In chapter four we had action, no talking required. Chapter five? Talking. Six? Talking. Talking. Two chapters ago there was a wild carrage ride I didn't mention because they spent the whole time talking.
And yet for all of that we know very little of who these characters actually are.
There are two kinds of characterization. One is purposeful, and the other is indvertant. Both are done through their character's actions and words. Bella Swan is a great example of inadvertant characterization. The author intended her to be a good person, but because Bella had all the character traits the author associates with goodness (virginity, modesty, a quiet and retiring nature) she never bothered with purposeful characterization. And so Bella comes off as being a manipulative, controlling, self-centered worthless cinder of a misbegotten human being. In the absence of purposeful characterization, the reader's mind latches on to anything that might resemble a character trait. And if your main character's first action in a book is to mentally sigh and roll her eyes over how childish her mother is, "ungreatful bitch" is going to be your character's first character trait.
The problem with this book? We don't even really get that. We get that Clary is stupid because she goes after Murder Trio without trying to find an adult, something that Simon does. We get that Clary is a terrible friend because of how she treats Simon, and we get that she has truely shitty taste in men because she chooses a verbally abusive, manipulative sociopathic murderer AKA Jace to be her primary love interest. But all Clary does is ask questions about things and whine. She has taken it upon herself to act exactly twice in the book so far. Once to follow the Murder Trio, which may mean her mom getting kidnapped is doubly her fault, and once to go through the magical door into the total unknown that turned out to be Luke's backyard. The rest of the time? She follows Jace around like a good little lamb and thinks judgemental things about the other characters in the book.
The most interesting thing? She has not once, NOT. FREAKING. ONCE. thought about trying to find her mother. She went through the door because she wanted to see where her mom would have gone, implying she knows damn well Mom ain't there. She goes to the party because she wants to get the block out of her memory. She wants the block out of her memory because the Shadowhunters want to know what's so dangerous she can't remember it. Never once does Clary go "hey, maybe this can help me find my Mom!"
I say all this because the first chunk of pages in this chapter is Clary, Jace and Magnus Bane talking about why Mom put the block in Clary's memory. Something any reader with two brain cells figured out three chapters ago:
Clary's mom is Magical Eva Braum, she's deeply ashamed of her having slept with evil incarnate, even more concerned that she's having Evil's baby (Clary) and she badly wants to hide and have her kid be normal. Her kid is not normal, and having a kid who can see things no one else can see is very bad, given the magnitude of secrets Mom is hiding. So she mind-blocked Clary to protect her from the massive number of things that would like to kill her, seeing as how she's Valentine's fucking daughter.
Even if you left out the part about her being Valentine's daughter--which should have been revealed a long time ago--the rest of Joycelyn Frey's actions make perfect sense.
And of course, we have to have Clary go on a long rant about consent and mind rape, something I have no sympathy for whatsoever, given that Clary had magical sight back for one fucking day before Joycelen got kidnapped and Clary wound up with the absolute last people she should be talking to. Should Joycelyn have been upfront and honest with her daughter, once Clary was old enough to keep the secret? Fuck yes. But you know, given Clary's maturity level, I think Joyce was planning on telling Clary as soon as they got to whatever safehouse she had squirreled away. Clary had to have the block replaced every couple of years, and she was over due enough for Magnus to drop by the Frey place. Mom's too careful to let that happen. So probably she was trying to wait for Clary to display thoughtfulness and foresight, she realized that was never going to fucking happen, and she decided that Clary needed to know things even if she is an idiot.
So after Magnus info dumps things we really don't need to know about, he tells her that the block will wear off and Clary will regain her memories on her own.
So the last three chapters? WERE UTTERLY FUCKING POINTLESS.
And so is what happens next. They go out into the party and Simon has drunk a magcial potion that turned him into a rat.
After screaming at Isabelle, who should have been watching them, Clary hauls Simon out from under the bar. Jace goes for Magnus, who tells them the spell will wear off in a few hours. Clary bitches about how much trouble it'll be to get a rat home on the subway.
Uh...isn't this New York? I'm sure rats have used the subway before.
Anyway, somebody starts a fight and Magnus moves on to stop it before it gets out of hand. Given that there are Phooka and Nixies and the like here, that's a good plan. It turns out to be vampires--uh, getting them taken care of instead of rat-boy is a VERY good plan--who are pissed because they can't find people. Magnus promises to send everyone home and ends the party.
The one cool thing about this scene is, Magnus's cat is named Chairman Meow. I think this is awesome.
And then Clary's mom...uh, sends a telepathic message or something through Magnus, telling Clary not to waste all her sacrifices by trying to save her. Thus justifying Clary having NOT GIVEN HER MOTHER A SINGLE THOUGHT since she got kidnapped.
You know, these moments are when the writer's subconsious is screaming "YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS RIGHT". Just saying.
Moving on.
So Clary leaves the building with the others, smiles at the vampires who are watching her for some reason, gets to whatever vehicle the Murder Trio are using for the night, and discovers that Simon-the-rat is no longer in her backpack.
She compares losing her best friend in rat form to losing her wallet on the subway.
Moving on.
So they go back to Magnus's place, and he tells them that he saw a vampire leave with "a brown rat" that he obviously thought was one of their own. Because of course he did.
Magnus's parties must be AWESOME. Just sayin'.
Moving on.
they ask for the location of the lair. Magnus says no, he won't betray the others to Shadowhunters. Clary sticks her foot in the door and says, "Hey, pretty please" in an attempt to have substance. Magnus tells them where the hotel is.
Finally Jace demands the location of the nearest church, because they're gonna need weapons.
...WHAT MAKES THINGS HOLY IN THIS UNIVERSE, CLARE? YOU MIGHT WANT TO EXPLAIN THIS.
The chapter ends.
So yes, boys and girls. This is really happening. We're taking one fuck of a plot detour involving rats and vampires. Because allowing ANY of this to be related to the kidnapping of Joycelyn Frey--remember that? Clary's Mom?--is asking far, far too much of this author.
Tomorrow: The hotel the vampires stay at is the "Hotel Dumort". It is not the hotel Transylvania, and things go as well as you can expect. MURDER. MURDER EVERYWHERE.
And yet for all of that we know very little of who these characters actually are.
There are two kinds of characterization. One is purposeful, and the other is indvertant. Both are done through their character's actions and words. Bella Swan is a great example of inadvertant characterization. The author intended her to be a good person, but because Bella had all the character traits the author associates with goodness (virginity, modesty, a quiet and retiring nature) she never bothered with purposeful characterization. And so Bella comes off as being a manipulative, controlling, self-centered worthless cinder of a misbegotten human being. In the absence of purposeful characterization, the reader's mind latches on to anything that might resemble a character trait. And if your main character's first action in a book is to mentally sigh and roll her eyes over how childish her mother is, "ungreatful bitch" is going to be your character's first character trait.
The problem with this book? We don't even really get that. We get that Clary is stupid because she goes after Murder Trio without trying to find an adult, something that Simon does. We get that Clary is a terrible friend because of how she treats Simon, and we get that she has truely shitty taste in men because she chooses a verbally abusive, manipulative sociopathic murderer AKA Jace to be her primary love interest. But all Clary does is ask questions about things and whine. She has taken it upon herself to act exactly twice in the book so far. Once to follow the Murder Trio, which may mean her mom getting kidnapped is doubly her fault, and once to go through the magical door into the total unknown that turned out to be Luke's backyard. The rest of the time? She follows Jace around like a good little lamb and thinks judgemental things about the other characters in the book.
The most interesting thing? She has not once, NOT. FREAKING. ONCE. thought about trying to find her mother. She went through the door because she wanted to see where her mom would have gone, implying she knows damn well Mom ain't there. She goes to the party because she wants to get the block out of her memory. She wants the block out of her memory because the Shadowhunters want to know what's so dangerous she can't remember it. Never once does Clary go "hey, maybe this can help me find my Mom!"
I say all this because the first chunk of pages in this chapter is Clary, Jace and Magnus Bane talking about why Mom put the block in Clary's memory. Something any reader with two brain cells figured out three chapters ago:
Clary's mom is Magical Eva Braum, she's deeply ashamed of her having slept with evil incarnate, even more concerned that she's having Evil's baby (Clary) and she badly wants to hide and have her kid be normal. Her kid is not normal, and having a kid who can see things no one else can see is very bad, given the magnitude of secrets Mom is hiding. So she mind-blocked Clary to protect her from the massive number of things that would like to kill her, seeing as how she's Valentine's fucking daughter.
Even if you left out the part about her being Valentine's daughter--which should have been revealed a long time ago--the rest of Joycelyn Frey's actions make perfect sense.
And of course, we have to have Clary go on a long rant about consent and mind rape, something I have no sympathy for whatsoever, given that Clary had magical sight back for one fucking day before Joycelen got kidnapped and Clary wound up with the absolute last people she should be talking to. Should Joycelyn have been upfront and honest with her daughter, once Clary was old enough to keep the secret? Fuck yes. But you know, given Clary's maturity level, I think Joyce was planning on telling Clary as soon as they got to whatever safehouse she had squirreled away. Clary had to have the block replaced every couple of years, and she was over due enough for Magnus to drop by the Frey place. Mom's too careful to let that happen. So probably she was trying to wait for Clary to display thoughtfulness and foresight, she realized that was never going to fucking happen, and she decided that Clary needed to know things even if she is an idiot.
So after Magnus info dumps things we really don't need to know about, he tells her that the block will wear off and Clary will regain her memories on her own.
So the last three chapters? WERE UTTERLY FUCKING POINTLESS.
And so is what happens next. They go out into the party and Simon has drunk a magcial potion that turned him into a rat.
After screaming at Isabelle, who should have been watching them, Clary hauls Simon out from under the bar. Jace goes for Magnus, who tells them the spell will wear off in a few hours. Clary bitches about how much trouble it'll be to get a rat home on the subway.
Uh...isn't this New York? I'm sure rats have used the subway before.
Anyway, somebody starts a fight and Magnus moves on to stop it before it gets out of hand. Given that there are Phooka and Nixies and the like here, that's a good plan. It turns out to be vampires--uh, getting them taken care of instead of rat-boy is a VERY good plan--who are pissed because they can't find people. Magnus promises to send everyone home and ends the party.
The one cool thing about this scene is, Magnus's cat is named Chairman Meow. I think this is awesome.
And then Clary's mom...uh, sends a telepathic message or something through Magnus, telling Clary not to waste all her sacrifices by trying to save her. Thus justifying Clary having NOT GIVEN HER MOTHER A SINGLE THOUGHT since she got kidnapped.
You know, these moments are when the writer's subconsious is screaming "YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS RIGHT". Just saying.
Moving on.
So Clary leaves the building with the others, smiles at the vampires who are watching her for some reason, gets to whatever vehicle the Murder Trio are using for the night, and discovers that Simon-the-rat is no longer in her backpack.
She compares losing her best friend in rat form to losing her wallet on the subway.
Moving on.
So they go back to Magnus's place, and he tells them that he saw a vampire leave with "a brown rat" that he obviously thought was one of their own. Because of course he did.
Magnus's parties must be AWESOME. Just sayin'.
Moving on.
they ask for the location of the lair. Magnus says no, he won't betray the others to Shadowhunters. Clary sticks her foot in the door and says, "Hey, pretty please" in an attempt to have substance. Magnus tells them where the hotel is.
Finally Jace demands the location of the nearest church, because they're gonna need weapons.
...WHAT MAKES THINGS HOLY IN THIS UNIVERSE, CLARE? YOU MIGHT WANT TO EXPLAIN THIS.
The chapter ends.
So yes, boys and girls. This is really happening. We're taking one fuck of a plot detour involving rats and vampires. Because allowing ANY of this to be related to the kidnapping of Joycelyn Frey--remember that? Clary's Mom?--is asking far, far too much of this author.
Tomorrow: The hotel the vampires stay at is the "Hotel Dumort". It is not the hotel Transylvania, and things go as well as you can expect. MURDER. MURDER EVERYWHERE.
November 22, 2012
Blog Review: Nesquester
So a buddy of mine asked me to do a review trade for him. He's an old-old old old old friend from WAY back in my Houston days, and when we connected back up on facebook I discovered that, like me, he'd gotten bit by the blog-review bug.
He and I decided to do a review exchange. This is my end.
It is difficult to review something that I heart as much as I do NESquester. The humor on this blog usually means I get a big head of ire up. NESquest is where I go when I need a giggle or two. He reviews old-school NES games in order of release. This is a little bit like saying that Niagra Falls is made of water. I would dread being the creator of a game that pissed him off. There are people who can curse, like yours truely, and then there are people who can use curses the way a guided missile uses radar.
What's really awesome is that he is doing EVERY NES game. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Which means there are a few turds in the pile, and more than a few gems that I certainly never ever heard of.
If there is one problem it is that he does not update often enough. But when he does, be it good or be it bad the review itself is a thing of gleaming beauty.
Go. Pay him many visits because he is, my loyal blog readers, far better at this game than I.
He and I decided to do a review exchange. This is my end.
It is difficult to review something that I heart as much as I do NESquester. The humor on this blog usually means I get a big head of ire up. NESquest is where I go when I need a giggle or two. He reviews old-school NES games in order of release. This is a little bit like saying that Niagra Falls is made of water. I would dread being the creator of a game that pissed him off. There are people who can curse, like yours truely, and then there are people who can use curses the way a guided missile uses radar.
What's really awesome is that he is doing EVERY NES game. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Which means there are a few turds in the pile, and more than a few gems that I certainly never ever heard of.
If there is one problem it is that he does not update often enough. But when he does, be it good or be it bad the review itself is a thing of gleaming beauty.
Go. Pay him many visits because he is, my loyal blog readers, far better at this game than I.
November 21, 2012
City of Bones Chapter 12
Now that I know this book was named after a city made of other people's cremains, typing that title gives me the fucking willies. Anyway, the party.
They do not go to the party. Oh no. This would cut into Clary's agnsty time.
I don't get why agnst is so cool. Usually if you're in a situation deserving of the wallowing, your too busy. At this point in time I'd be more worried about my Mom. Actually, at this point I would have figured out that my Dad was Magic Hitler and I would be taking the thousandth of infinite showers, or else ingesting copious amounts of mental bleach in an effort to make things okay.
Anyway, Clary must agnst about having people dig around in her head some more. Okay, I'd be nervy too, but I'd be more like, "Uh, you think going into a demon/warlock party with the warlock's former worst enemies (AGAIN. THE SHADOW HUNTERS ARE THE MAGICAL SS. REFORMED. KIND OF.) isn't going to cause a lot of problems?" instead of "OMG SOMEONE WILL BE IN MY HEAD."
Also, we get to see vampires. Who are using motorcycles. Modified to run on demon energy.
Let me rephrase that: VAMPIRES RIDE ON HARLEYS FUELED BY THE SCREAMS OF THE DAMNED.
Why are we following magic nazis around again?
So they go up to the door, which takes about another page and a half, and Magnus Bane comes to the door. And he is...hehe...he's...*sporfle* he...Oh, screw it. He's Bobby Trendy.
You have no idea how happy I was to find one with blue lips.He invites them in and tells them not to murder any of the guests. With this lot, that's something you need to say, especially since Jace responds, "Even if they spill a drink on my new shoes?"
He's a real winner, Clary. /sarcasm.
They go through the party. The description is actually pretty good. I also love how blood is always described as "liquid too thick to be wine". Whenever I see it I always get the feeling that the author has never handled a lot of either blood or wine. Wine and blood? Look. NOTHING. Alike. Not that I've ever seen a cup of blood. But having handled six gazillion glasses of wine? I cannot imagine anyone EVER mistaking it for a glass of blood, or vice versa.
And just when there's a risk of the plot advancing, first Simon and Isabelle dirty dance on the disco floor, and then somebody pours holy water into a vampire's gas tank, utterly destroying the ENTIRE BIKE. FINALLY, though, he takes Clary and Jace to his bedroom...ew...and, uh, in case you doubted that this is Bobby Trendy:
Now, I was all geared up for this exciting confrontation. Clary tells him that she can't remember things, and he says he never met her, and isn't it sad, and Jace says of course he knows her, when the self-multilating Silent Brothers read her mind they found his name in it.
And he...tells them sure, yeah, he did it, and Clary's mother paid him.
And that's the end of the chapter.
Some might say this book moves at a glacial pace. I say glacial pace would be a FUCKING UPGRADE.
Ah, well. Next chapter: Simon hijacks the plot by getting turned into a rat.
yeah. It's that kind of book.
They do not go to the party. Oh no. This would cut into Clary's agnsty time.
I don't get why agnst is so cool. Usually if you're in a situation deserving of the wallowing, your too busy. At this point in time I'd be more worried about my Mom. Actually, at this point I would have figured out that my Dad was Magic Hitler and I would be taking the thousandth of infinite showers, or else ingesting copious amounts of mental bleach in an effort to make things okay.
Anyway, Clary must agnst about having people dig around in her head some more. Okay, I'd be nervy too, but I'd be more like, "Uh, you think going into a demon/warlock party with the warlock's former worst enemies (AGAIN. THE SHADOW HUNTERS ARE THE MAGICAL SS. REFORMED. KIND OF.) isn't going to cause a lot of problems?" instead of "OMG SOMEONE WILL BE IN MY HEAD."
Also, we get to see vampires. Who are using motorcycles. Modified to run on demon energy.
Let me rephrase that: VAMPIRES RIDE ON HARLEYS FUELED BY THE SCREAMS OF THE DAMNED.
Why are we following magic nazis around again?
So they go up to the door, which takes about another page and a half, and Magnus Bane comes to the door. And he is...hehe...he's...*sporfle* he...Oh, screw it. He's Bobby Trendy.
Clary guessed from the curve of his sleepy eyes and the gold tone of his evenly tanned skin that he was part Asian. He wore jeans and a black shirt covered with dozens of metal buckles. His eyes were crusted with a raccoon mask of charcoal glitter, his lips painted a dark shade of blue. He raked a ring-laden hand through his spiked hair and regarded them thoughtfully.
You have no idea how happy I was to find one with blue lips.He invites them in and tells them not to murder any of the guests. With this lot, that's something you need to say, especially since Jace responds, "Even if they spill a drink on my new shoes?"He's a real winner, Clary. /sarcasm.
They go through the party. The description is actually pretty good. I also love how blood is always described as "liquid too thick to be wine". Whenever I see it I always get the feeling that the author has never handled a lot of either blood or wine. Wine and blood? Look. NOTHING. Alike. Not that I've ever seen a cup of blood. But having handled six gazillion glasses of wine? I cannot imagine anyone EVER mistaking it for a glass of blood, or vice versa.
And just when there's a risk of the plot advancing, first Simon and Isabelle dirty dance on the disco floor, and then somebody pours holy water into a vampire's gas tank, utterly destroying the ENTIRE BIKE. FINALLY, though, he takes Clary and Jace to his bedroom...ew...and, uh, in case you doubted that this is Bobby Trendy:
Magnus’s bedroom was a riot of color: canary-yellow sheets and bedspread draped over a mattress on the floor, electric-blue vanity table strewn with more pots of paint and makeup than Isabelle’s. Rainbow velvet curtains hid the floor-to-ceiling windows, and a tangled wool rug covered the floor.
Now, I was all geared up for this exciting confrontation. Clary tells him that she can't remember things, and he says he never met her, and isn't it sad, and Jace says of course he knows her, when the self-multilating Silent Brothers read her mind they found his name in it.
And he...tells them sure, yeah, he did it, and Clary's mother paid him.
And that's the end of the chapter.
Some might say this book moves at a glacial pace. I say glacial pace would be a FUCKING UPGRADE.
Ah, well. Next chapter: Simon hijacks the plot by getting turned into a rat.
yeah. It's that kind of book.
To the many people who find me by googling porn:
It's spelled "diaper."
You're welcome.
This is how I react whenever I read my search strings. I will never be clean again.
You're welcome.
This is how I react whenever I read my search strings. I will never be clean again.
City of Bones: The movie Trailer+ CW's books update
You know, I didn't think the movie was this far along:
How do I feel about this? Well, at least Clary screams when she sees the Murder Trio take out a random boy. Also, Hoodie boy with a knife? That ain't the demon. That's Jace.
I'm going to hold off on doing another chapter because I have writing to do. I didn't realize this at the time, but the world building possibilities in Leythorne's world are FREAKING ENDLESS. They don't have a government or a culture or...well, much of anything to speak of right now, so I get to build it from the ground up as I write it. It's kind of...awesome. At the moment the driving question behind the next Gray Prince book is how to you 1. define currency when gold is less valuable than food and 2. how do you motivate people to work, while still guaranteeing certain basic rights (Nobody sleeps in the cold and nobody starves) and then, of course, the offshoot to question three: How do you deal with a system of government built on idealism when it starts breaking down? I am totally unqualified to answer any of this, but I am going to try.
A sneek peek at Planet Bob, the next Starbleached book, was not in This Found Thing because it is a mess. I *think* I know where I want it to go, and TFT was just as big of a mess as Planet Bob. (FYI the climax scene? Was smack dab in the middle during the first draft.) and it came out good, IMHO.
There is a reason I haven't put it up on Smashwords yet, and I DEARLY want to discuss this with you guys. So far the ONLY way I've managed to sell any books is by first making them free via Amazon's KDP select program. The downside is, I can only sell them on Amazon. And I really want this book to sell, not quite so much for the money (though to be honest, I'd like that too) but because this is tied into my (if you'll pardon the momentary sappiness) heart project, the trilogy of novels-that-never-were, that will rise again if I can manage to build an audience for them. So right now I'm debating what to do. Several titles go off KDP Select next month: Silver Bullet, Starbleached, and Rise of the Winterlord, which is now just the first couple scenes of This Found Thing. My intention has been to put Silver Bullet and RotW on Smashwords as free things, because Amazon will eventually pick this up, and then keep Starbleached in KDP Select, because it's selling the best. (I am assuming most of my Blog Readers that buy my books bought that book, that you are all waiting with baited breath for Planet Bob, and that you're wishing I'd get over this fantasy stuff and go right straight back to sci-fi. Sorry. I have a plan and that is not it)
I guess my point is, the Buy Day exparament told me that...well...AND THIS IS NOT INTENDED AS AN OFFENSIVE SLUR TO YOU!...you guys don't want to read my books. Or, at least, you don't want to pay for them. Which is sad, but something that I wanted to know, and now I do know it. (Actually this whole self publishing thing has pretty much shown me that the pros were right and I really do suck as a writer, but ya'll are really sick of hearing that, so that's the ONLY time I'll say that this month I promise) So here's the thing. I know one of you is waiting on me putting the book on Smashwords, which I will do on Monday because I kind of made that promise, but if sales don't pick up a little bit (read as: book sold to someone I cannot immediately account for because they showed up at my house/facebook page/place of work and chanted "I bought your book! I bought your book!". I will settle for ONE SALE) by the end of the year, then new books go on KDP select. It sucks, but if that's the kind of house we live in I'm going to live the heck out of it.
And I know all that is depressing nonsense so here is a .gif of a kitty. Be happy.
How do I feel about this? Well, at least Clary screams when she sees the Murder Trio take out a random boy. Also, Hoodie boy with a knife? That ain't the demon. That's Jace.
I'm going to hold off on doing another chapter because I have writing to do. I didn't realize this at the time, but the world building possibilities in Leythorne's world are FREAKING ENDLESS. They don't have a government or a culture or...well, much of anything to speak of right now, so I get to build it from the ground up as I write it. It's kind of...awesome. At the moment the driving question behind the next Gray Prince book is how to you 1. define currency when gold is less valuable than food and 2. how do you motivate people to work, while still guaranteeing certain basic rights (Nobody sleeps in the cold and nobody starves) and then, of course, the offshoot to question three: How do you deal with a system of government built on idealism when it starts breaking down? I am totally unqualified to answer any of this, but I am going to try.
A sneek peek at Planet Bob, the next Starbleached book, was not in This Found Thing because it is a mess. I *think* I know where I want it to go, and TFT was just as big of a mess as Planet Bob. (FYI the climax scene? Was smack dab in the middle during the first draft.) and it came out good, IMHO.
There is a reason I haven't put it up on Smashwords yet, and I DEARLY want to discuss this with you guys. So far the ONLY way I've managed to sell any books is by first making them free via Amazon's KDP select program. The downside is, I can only sell them on Amazon. And I really want this book to sell, not quite so much for the money (though to be honest, I'd like that too) but because this is tied into my (if you'll pardon the momentary sappiness) heart project, the trilogy of novels-that-never-were, that will rise again if I can manage to build an audience for them. So right now I'm debating what to do. Several titles go off KDP Select next month: Silver Bullet, Starbleached, and Rise of the Winterlord, which is now just the first couple scenes of This Found Thing. My intention has been to put Silver Bullet and RotW on Smashwords as free things, because Amazon will eventually pick this up, and then keep Starbleached in KDP Select, because it's selling the best. (I am assuming most of my Blog Readers that buy my books bought that book, that you are all waiting with baited breath for Planet Bob, and that you're wishing I'd get over this fantasy stuff and go right straight back to sci-fi. Sorry. I have a plan and that is not it)
I guess my point is, the Buy Day exparament told me that...well...AND THIS IS NOT INTENDED AS AN OFFENSIVE SLUR TO YOU!...you guys don't want to read my books. Or, at least, you don't want to pay for them. Which is sad, but something that I wanted to know, and now I do know it. (Actually this whole self publishing thing has pretty much shown me that the pros were right and I really do suck as a writer, but ya'll are really sick of hearing that, so that's the ONLY time I'll say that this month I promise) So here's the thing. I know one of you is waiting on me putting the book on Smashwords, which I will do on Monday because I kind of made that promise, but if sales don't pick up a little bit (read as: book sold to someone I cannot immediately account for because they showed up at my house/facebook page/place of work and chanted "I bought your book! I bought your book!". I will settle for ONE SALE) by the end of the year, then new books go on KDP select. It sucks, but if that's the kind of house we live in I'm going to live the heck out of it.
And I know all that is depressing nonsense so here is a .gif of a kitty. Be happy.
November 20, 2012
City of Bones Chapter Eleven
I know, I know. Two posts in one day are a little much. But one, I want to get DONE with this POS, which is a bad sign if I didn't have two TERRIBLE books waiting in the wings and...I feel like crap.
Actually, I feel as if I've been standing on a boat for a week and a half. My tummy, boys and girls, is not a happy tummy. But subtle and annoying balance issues aside, I don't want to do anything except tear into something terrible.
And this book certainly counts. Where were we?
Right. MAGNUS BANE.
There are names that just scream "I WANT TO BE IMPORTANT". This is one of them.
So after Jace verbally abuses a taxi driver--wait. Let me check that.
...yep. He verbally abuses a taxi driver:
This guy? Is not a winner. Is more of a "spray couch down with disinfectant."
SO. After verbally abusing a taxi driver, Jace takes Clary to a magical restaurant. Alec, Isabelle and Simon all meet them there. Clary realizes the doorman is not human, and Jace calmly lets her know its not a demon, either:
THAT IS NOT WHAT AN IFRIT IS.
Finaly Fantasy aside, they are a creature of...oh MY, Arabic and Islamic cultures. So it seems I spoke too soon a couple days ago. Ifrit and "djinni" are, according to Wikipedia, interchangible, and according to my memories of A Thousand and One Nights are pretty damn badass. As in "Melt your life" badass. Another word for them is "genie"
DO NOT DISS THE GENIE, CLARE. DO NOT DISS THE GENIE.
Other patrons of the magical pasta shop include vampires, as proven by the blood on the menu, kelpies, nixies, fairies, and...you know, other than the fairies, there isn't one damn thing on this list I'd want in my restaurant. Oh, selkies. I'd have a selkie. Selkies and fairies, but everything else is either best known for drowning children alive or Edward Cullen. And nobody wants Edward Cullen.
Alec launches into a long conversation that lets Clary realize Alec is in love with Jace. Just like her.
There are better people to become attached to, kids. Some of them even qualify as functional human beings. Seriously. How can anybody sit close to Jace and not come down with a severe case of hives?
They decide to leave, given that all these downworlders are listening. Hey, kids? Let's start by not going into a downworlder restaruant to begin with. Also, we get to add peri and Djinni to the list of Things Clare has Borrowed Inappropretely. Though again, technically ifrit are dijinni, but not all djinn are ifrit. Kind of like bugs and insects ,you know?
Moving on.
So Isabelle suddenly flips out and asks Jace what the warlock they have to find is. Apparently, Magnus Bane is a warlock who is a MAJOR pain in the ass. Well, it turns out that Isabelle got an invite to a party from a downworlder while she was dancing at Pandaemonium at the beginning of the book.
You know. The place where they straight up murdered a boy in front of Clary.
So after deciding that this party is THE place to go to get info on Magnus they...go back to the institute.
You know, the thing about Harry Potter taking for fucking ever to get to the point? They had classes to do. And the one time they didn't have classes...yes. The FUCKING camping scenes got old fast, but there was this whole viva la Resistance thing going on that fit in with underlying themes of THIS IS WORLD WAR THREE.
Clary is bunking with the SS. Reformed SS, but EVERYBODY in this book is either reformed SS, SS for reals, or straight up related to Hitler. This is not the resistance. This is not Dumbledor's Army and the bleeding Order of the Phoenix. These are the people they are fighting against. So is it a little much to have SOMETHING FUCKING HAPPEN please?
Yes. Apparently, yes it is. Clary wanders around the institute and finds The Mirror of Erised a picture of her mother. Standing next to Valentine. With her arms around him. Which is weird to Clary because she never imagined her mom being with anybody other than her dad.
Kiddo, you went to school, right? Let's play a little game we grown ups like to call Math.
You are fifteen.
Sixteen years ago your dad died.
Sixteen years ago your mother was involved with Valentine. Who everyone said died.
The average child gestates for nine months.
Nine months subtracted from twelve leaves three.
Your mother would have had three months to find any other possible male to fuck to produce you.
Your mother, sixteen years after losing her "first love", is still too screwed up to date anyone.
Obvious answer should be obvious, even to you.
So Hodge gives her the photo, which has pictures of everyone in it, including Jace's dad, who looks nothing at all like Jace. And Clary realizes how romantically Valentine and her mom are looking at each other, and I could just fucking vomit. Seriously. On top of my vertigo issues it's almost too much.
Then she goes into her bedroom and finds Jace looking at her pictures. He tells her what a WONDERFUL artist she is, she shuffles her feet all embarised like, and Jace decides to tell her a bedtime story about himself and his father.
It's supposed to be a story of how Real Men Are Taught To Be Men. Instead, it's a textbook case of abuse at the hands of a sadist. Seriously, this story wouldn't be out of place in A Child Called It. Jace's dad gave him a falcon to tame, only it was a wild bird that was supposed to be impossible to tame. Jace, given that he is a main character and all animals come to his Snow White Aura, tamed it. Dad, miffed that he didn't account for it, broke its neck and made up bullshit to justify his temper tantrum.
Magic World needs CPS like NOW kids.
So she goes to sleep and is awakened by Isabelle, who insists on giving Clary one of Twilight-Alice's patented makovers before they head off to Magnus's party. After getting all dolled up, Simon flips out. Oh, and here is how Simon is presented:
Jace examines her, decides he approves of her wearing one of Isabelle's shirts as a dress--not kidding--and then gives her a knife. The chapter ends.
TOMORROW: A party at Trying-Too-Hard Bane's. Should be fun. Not.
Actually, I feel as if I've been standing on a boat for a week and a half. My tummy, boys and girls, is not a happy tummy. But subtle and annoying balance issues aside, I don't want to do anything except tear into something terrible.
And this book certainly counts. Where were we?
Right. MAGNUS BANE.
There are names that just scream "I WANT TO BE IMPORTANT". This is one of them.
So after Jace verbally abuses a taxi driver--wait. Let me check that.
...yep. He verbally abuses a taxi driver:
Jace leaned forward and banged his hand against the partition separating them from the cab driver. “Turn left! Left! I said to take Broadway, you brain-dead moron!”You know, there is a rule in dating. You pay attention to how the other person treats service workers. You know, waitresses, cashiers and taxi drivers. If they are an asshole to them, they will eventually be an asshole to you.
This guy? Is not a winner. Is more of a "spray couch down with disinfectant."
SO. After verbally abusing a taxi driver, Jace takes Clary to a magical restaurant. Alec, Isabelle and Simon all meet them there. Clary realizes the doorman is not human, and Jace calmly lets her know its not a demon, either:
“He’s an ifrit,” Jace explained. “They’re warlocks with no magic. Half demons who can’t cast spells for whatever reason.”
THAT IS NOT WHAT AN IFRIT IS.
Finaly Fantasy aside, they are a creature of...oh MY, Arabic and Islamic cultures. So it seems I spoke too soon a couple days ago. Ifrit and "djinni" are, according to Wikipedia, interchangible, and according to my memories of A Thousand and One Nights are pretty damn badass. As in "Melt your life" badass. Another word for them is "genie"
DO NOT DISS THE GENIE, CLARE. DO NOT DISS THE GENIE.
Other patrons of the magical pasta shop include vampires, as proven by the blood on the menu, kelpies, nixies, fairies, and...you know, other than the fairies, there isn't one damn thing on this list I'd want in my restaurant. Oh, selkies. I'd have a selkie. Selkies and fairies, but everything else is either best known for drowning children alive or Edward Cullen. And nobody wants Edward Cullen.
Alec launches into a long conversation that lets Clary realize Alec is in love with Jace. Just like her.
There are better people to become attached to, kids. Some of them even qualify as functional human beings. Seriously. How can anybody sit close to Jace and not come down with a severe case of hives?
They decide to leave, given that all these downworlders are listening. Hey, kids? Let's start by not going into a downworlder restaruant to begin with. Also, we get to add peri and Djinni to the list of Things Clare has Borrowed Inappropretely. Though again, technically ifrit are dijinni, but not all djinn are ifrit. Kind of like bugs and insects ,you know?
Moving on.
So Isabelle suddenly flips out and asks Jace what the warlock they have to find is. Apparently, Magnus Bane is a warlock who is a MAJOR pain in the ass. Well, it turns out that Isabelle got an invite to a party from a downworlder while she was dancing at Pandaemonium at the beginning of the book.
You know. The place where they straight up murdered a boy in front of Clary.
So after deciding that this party is THE place to go to get info on Magnus they...go back to the institute.
You know, the thing about Harry Potter taking for fucking ever to get to the point? They had classes to do. And the one time they didn't have classes...yes. The FUCKING camping scenes got old fast, but there was this whole viva la Resistance thing going on that fit in with underlying themes of THIS IS WORLD WAR THREE.
Clary is bunking with the SS. Reformed SS, but EVERYBODY in this book is either reformed SS, SS for reals, or straight up related to Hitler. This is not the resistance. This is not Dumbledor's Army and the bleeding Order of the Phoenix. These are the people they are fighting against. So is it a little much to have SOMETHING FUCKING HAPPEN please?
Yes. Apparently, yes it is. Clary wanders around the institute and finds The Mirror of Erised a picture of her mother. Standing next to Valentine. With her arms around him. Which is weird to Clary because she never imagined her mom being with anybody other than her dad.
Kiddo, you went to school, right? Let's play a little game we grown ups like to call Math.
You are fifteen.
Sixteen years ago your dad died.
Sixteen years ago your mother was involved with Valentine. Who everyone said died.
The average child gestates for nine months.
Nine months subtracted from twelve leaves three.
Your mother would have had three months to find any other possible male to fuck to produce you.
Your mother, sixteen years after losing her "first love", is still too screwed up to date anyone.
Obvious answer should be obvious, even to you.
So Hodge gives her the photo, which has pictures of everyone in it, including Jace's dad, who looks nothing at all like Jace. And Clary realizes how romantically Valentine and her mom are looking at each other, and I could just fucking vomit. Seriously. On top of my vertigo issues it's almost too much.
Then she goes into her bedroom and finds Jace looking at her pictures. He tells her what a WONDERFUL artist she is, she shuffles her feet all embarised like, and Jace decides to tell her a bedtime story about himself and his father.
It's supposed to be a story of how Real Men Are Taught To Be Men. Instead, it's a textbook case of abuse at the hands of a sadist. Seriously, this story wouldn't be out of place in A Child Called It. Jace's dad gave him a falcon to tame, only it was a wild bird that was supposed to be impossible to tame. Jace, given that he is a main character and all animals come to his Snow White Aura, tamed it. Dad, miffed that he didn't account for it, broke its neck and made up bullshit to justify his temper tantrum.
Magic World needs CPS like NOW kids.
So she goes to sleep and is awakened by Isabelle, who insists on giving Clary one of Twilight-Alice's patented makovers before they head off to Magnus's party. After getting all dolled up, Simon flips out. Oh, and here is how Simon is presented:
Even half in demon hunter clothes, Clary thought, he looked like the sort of boy who’d come over to your house to pick you up for a date and be polite to your parents and nice to your pets.Because GOD FORBID we have somebody who is actually a good person be rewarded for being good.
Jace examines her, decides he approves of her wearing one of Isabelle's shirts as a dress--not kidding--and then gives her a knife. The chapter ends.
TOMORROW: A party at Trying-Too-Hard Bane's. Should be fun. Not.
City of Bones Chapter Ten
Let's see. Last chapter twist was the Clary's mom was Valentine's wife.
If you did not see this coming, you need to drop your Reader Cards off at the door.
Anyone want to take bets for how long Clary will wonder who her father is, before finally admitting the bleeding obvious?
Having just read this chapter, and it is the never ending chapter THAT NEVER BLEEDING ENDS, let's go over the things we know and the things that we don't know before we get started:
-Clary's Mom was married to Valentine
-Clary was told that her Dad's name was Jonathan Christopher, or J.C.
-Jace's dad was murdered
-the murderers are the two men who talked to Uncle Luke
-Uncle Luke was a Shadowhunter and a member of Valentine's circle.
-Mom was a Shadowhunter and a member of Valentine's circle.
-There is a block on Clary's mind.
-Valentine wants the Mortal Cup.
Also, I want to point out that this plot is now, basically, Eva Braum escaped the bunker and sixteen years later had a fifteen year old kid, and the kid's dad is Totally Not Hitler. And nobody gives a fuck that Magic!Hitler's wife is still alive and running around on her own recon.
On to the actual chapter.
After the kids stop screaming, Hodge tells Clary that everybody left the circle once they realized that Valentine was totally twisted. So to translate this into IRL history terms...this is members of the SS leaving when they realized that Hitler totally intended to kill people. Because, you know, joining a hate group in the first place is perfectly fine. Jace's dad was also in the Circle, and he left. Isabelle and Alec's parents and Hodge stuck around.
Three members of the supporting cast stuck around for Magic!Holocaust. And this is never addressed again.
And then...Isabelle announces that dinner is ready, and we have wonderful humor about how horrible Isabelle is at cooking.
You know, maybe I'm getting so pissed at this becasue I OD'ed on WW2 documentaries on netflix a couple weeks ago, but...look, this book is watered down Harry Potter. Everybody knows it. So the characters and organizations are technically modeled on Rowling's sources, once removed. J.K. Rowling is on record stating that Hitler inspired Voldemort. And having read all the HP books, she got kind of close. Kind of. She overplayed the tragic!past (Hitler's big injury was not getting into art school) and underplayed the evil. Voldemort was a flamboyant asshole who liked to kill people out of hand, throw things at his followers and make Harry's life miserable. Hitler was a mild-mannered vegitarian who didn't believe in smoking, drinking or makeup. He loved his dog, he loved his girlfriends, he was from all reports devistated when his niece killed herself and handled Eva Braum with kid gloves so that she wouldn't hurt herself...and he gleefully ordered mass genocide because he thought it was right. He was a repellant son of a bitch, and the people who followed him weren't any better. The thing that disgusted me the most were the stories of SS officers going to conquered countries and demanding the mass deportation of Jews, and getting really petulant when the leaders of said countries refused to deport any of their own citizens, because they would get a bonus if they sent so many thousand human beings to the camps. You watch enough of these things, you start wanting to tear down the entire universe and replace it all with eternal puppies because that's the only way things will ever be right again.
And we just interrupted the magical universe's version of "Dr. Mengele is in Argentina and your Mom is Eva Braum" for kitchen games with Isabelle. And after we get a few paragraphs of food description, we get this:
The stages of understanding just how shitty a book really is.
Seriously. The emotional baggage to Valentine should literally be the baggage attached to Hitler. This is like saying, "AWW, your Mom's Eva Braum and now Hitler's back and he wants to be with her for ever and ever and evers. Love."
Yes. Your mom fucked the most evil dude in our history, and I think it's romantic.
Please tell me somebody smacks the shit out of her?
So now they explain that the Mortal Cup can make Shadowhunters out of normal people...as long as the chosen are children, as long as the children are tested to within an inch of their lives. Otherwise it kills them. Now, my brain just went, "But if mortals don't know about Shadowhunters and Shadowhunters themselves are dwindling because they keep getting dead at a young age, and the only children you can choose are obviously vollunteered by their parents, who are mortal because otherwise this kid would be a Shadowhunter already, but they don't know about Shadowhunters so HOW CAN THEY--"
and then this happened.But this is a book that just straight up fucking glorified the relationship between Adolf Hitler and Eva Braum as something romantic. Expecting logic is a little much.
Anyway, just giving the cup to everybody is bad, because it'll kill most of the people who drink from it. So Valentine's brilliant plot was to gather 20% of the children for his demon killing army and let the rest die of his drugs. So we have the Final Solution against the demons, and also mass genocide of the people Valen-hitler was trying to protect. The kids ask Hodge how could he do that, and Hodge replies:
So they decide that nobody can go after Valentine and Clary's mom because that would hurry up the end of the book and this would be a bad thing. Instead, they're going to go to the Silent Brothers who will break the block on Clary's memory and make her remember things. There is a lot of talking. During which, this is stated:
Moving on.
The Silent Brother, Jeremiah (...bible name) tries to break the block on Clary's memories. Only he can't, because there is a block there. "What, like she's repressed them?" Jace asks, and Jeremiah says no, it's a spell. They have to go where ALL the silent brothers are, and of-fucking-course it's in New York. They ride through the city in a magical carrige while Jace tells Clary his Tragic Life Story. See, he had this loving father, but these two guys, who are the guys he saw in Luke's apartment, they came in one day and killed his dad. And he watched it. Only he didn't know who those guys were until he saw them in Luke's apartment and now he's not telling Hodge because Hodge would stop him from killing Valentine. Then Jace launches into a long speil about how demons are evil and the only thing keeping the mundanes safe are the Aryans Nephilum like Jace.
Then Clary asks him about reproduction, and we're suddenly one traffic stop away from reproducing the steam-on-the-car-window scene in Titanic.
So they go into the Silent City AKA the Bone City AKA the City of Bone, because we HAD to get our title drop in there, and Brother Jeremiah takes Clary to see all the other Silent Brothers. And they go into the city and it looks, I shit you not, exactly like the Mines of Moria, right before the Balrog shows up and ruins everyone's day:
Too bad I have to go back to this shit.
Oh, hey, all this marble doesn't seem very City-of-Bone-y. What are the arches made of?
So the Silent Brothers go into Clary's head, and they find the block. Clary halucinates the name Magnus Bane, because otherwise this book would go nowhere, and the Silent Brothers state they cannot break the spell on her mind. It's too powerful. She has to go to Magnus Bane, the guy who put it there.
I have a question: what if Clary had hallucinated a purple people eater? Would she have to go find that?
Moving on.
So Jeremiah leads them out of the city, Clary and Jace flirt over her blood, not kidding at all, and they decide to take a cab out of the magical ash house. End of chapter.
So at the end of this chapter we now know:
-Clary's Mom was married to Valentine
-Clary was told that her Dad's name was Jonathan Christopher, or J.C.
-Jace's dad was murdered
-the murderers are the two men who talked to Uncle Luke
-Uncle Luke was a Shadowhunter and a member of Valentine's circle.
-Mom was a Shadowhunter and a member of Valentine's circle.
-There is a block on Clary's mind.
-Valentine wants the Mortal Cup.
-MAGNUS BANE
Next chapter: We take every mythological thing ever and translate it into Clare's quasi-Christian theology mess. And it works exactly as well as you think.
And I have to say it: this book is termites-in-its-smile bad, all wrapped up in cotton candy, but it's not the worst book I've ever heard of. Captive of Gor made me want to kick things, but it was not the worst book I've ever heard of. The book we're doing after this? Narcissus in Chains? It is now the second worst book I've ever heard of. What is the worst book I've ever heard of?
This is.
I found it last night, and even though it's a self-published book (by a former pro) and even though that technically means I shouldn't touch it out of professional courtesy, it's on the list of things to do. HOLY. SHIT. I almost want to snuggle it but then I'd be dirty, blog readers. I'd be so very very dirty.
If you did not see this coming, you need to drop your Reader Cards off at the door.
Anyone want to take bets for how long Clary will wonder who her father is, before finally admitting the bleeding obvious?
Having just read this chapter, and it is the never ending chapter THAT NEVER BLEEDING ENDS, let's go over the things we know and the things that we don't know before we get started:
-Clary's Mom was married to Valentine
-Clary was told that her Dad's name was Jonathan Christopher, or J.C.
-Jace's dad was murdered
-the murderers are the two men who talked to Uncle Luke
-Uncle Luke was a Shadowhunter and a member of Valentine's circle.
-Mom was a Shadowhunter and a member of Valentine's circle.
-There is a block on Clary's mind.
-Valentine wants the Mortal Cup.
Also, I want to point out that this plot is now, basically, Eva Braum escaped the bunker and sixteen years later had a fifteen year old kid, and the kid's dad is Totally Not Hitler. And nobody gives a fuck that Magic!Hitler's wife is still alive and running around on her own recon.
On to the actual chapter.
After the kids stop screaming, Hodge tells Clary that everybody left the circle once they realized that Valentine was totally twisted. So to translate this into IRL history terms...this is members of the SS leaving when they realized that Hitler totally intended to kill people. Because, you know, joining a hate group in the first place is perfectly fine. Jace's dad was also in the Circle, and he left. Isabelle and Alec's parents and Hodge stuck around.
Three members of the supporting cast stuck around for Magic!Holocaust. And this is never addressed again.
And then...Isabelle announces that dinner is ready, and we have wonderful humor about how horrible Isabelle is at cooking.
You know, maybe I'm getting so pissed at this becasue I OD'ed on WW2 documentaries on netflix a couple weeks ago, but...look, this book is watered down Harry Potter. Everybody knows it. So the characters and organizations are technically modeled on Rowling's sources, once removed. J.K. Rowling is on record stating that Hitler inspired Voldemort. And having read all the HP books, she got kind of close. Kind of. She overplayed the tragic!past (Hitler's big injury was not getting into art school) and underplayed the evil. Voldemort was a flamboyant asshole who liked to kill people out of hand, throw things at his followers and make Harry's life miserable. Hitler was a mild-mannered vegitarian who didn't believe in smoking, drinking or makeup. He loved his dog, he loved his girlfriends, he was from all reports devistated when his niece killed herself and handled Eva Braum with kid gloves so that she wouldn't hurt herself...and he gleefully ordered mass genocide because he thought it was right. He was a repellant son of a bitch, and the people who followed him weren't any better. The thing that disgusted me the most were the stories of SS officers going to conquered countries and demanding the mass deportation of Jews, and getting really petulant when the leaders of said countries refused to deport any of their own citizens, because they would get a bonus if they sent so many thousand human beings to the camps. You watch enough of these things, you start wanting to tear down the entire universe and replace it all with eternal puppies because that's the only way things will ever be right again.
And we just interrupted the magical universe's version of "Dr. Mengele is in Argentina and your Mom is Eva Braum" for kitchen games with Isabelle. And after we get a few paragraphs of food description, we get this:
“Well, I think it’s kind of romantic,” said Isabelle, sucking tapioca pearls through an enormous pink straw.
“What is?” asked Simon, instantly alert.
“That whole business about Clary’s mother being married to Valentine,” said Isabelle.
The stages of understanding just how shitty a book really is.Seriously. The emotional baggage to Valentine should literally be the baggage attached to Hitler. This is like saying, "AWW, your Mom's Eva Braum and now Hitler's back and he wants to be with her for ever and ever and evers. Love."
Yes. Your mom fucked the most evil dude in our history, and I think it's romantic.
Please tell me somebody smacks the shit out of her?
“Isabelle,” said Hodge patiently, “this is the man who rained down destruction on Idris the like of which it had never seen, who set Shadowhunter against Downworlder and made the streets of the Glass City run with blood.”
“That’s sort of hot,” Isabelle argued, “that evil thing.”Look, if I stay on this subject the blog will go on for several days, so let's just do this. Watch Downfall. Watch any one of the six gazillion documentaries on the Holocaust. Then come back here and tell me that Isabelle hasn't just qualified for emergancy sterilization so that her sociopathic stupidity is never passed on to the next generation.
So now they explain that the Mortal Cup can make Shadowhunters out of normal people...as long as the chosen are children, as long as the children are tested to within an inch of their lives. Otherwise it kills them. Now, my brain just went, "But if mortals don't know about Shadowhunters and Shadowhunters themselves are dwindling because they keep getting dead at a young age, and the only children you can choose are obviously vollunteered by their parents, who are mortal because otherwise this kid would be a Shadowhunter already, but they don't know about Shadowhunters so HOW CAN THEY--"
and then this happened.But this is a book that just straight up fucking glorified the relationship between Adolf Hitler and Eva Braum as something romantic. Expecting logic is a little much.Anyway, just giving the cup to everybody is bad, because it'll kill most of the people who drink from it. So Valentine's brilliant plot was to gather 20% of the children for his demon killing army and let the rest die of his drugs. So we have the Final Solution against the demons, and also mass genocide of the people Valen-hitler was trying to protect. The kids ask Hodge how could he do that, and Hodge replies:
He was insane. Brilliant, but insane.No shit. Only you can leave out the Brilliant part. It implies that the genocidal asshole was actually right about something.
So they decide that nobody can go after Valentine and Clary's mom because that would hurry up the end of the book and this would be a bad thing. Instead, they're going to go to the Silent Brothers who will break the block on Clary's memory and make her remember things. There is a lot of talking. During which, this is stated:
“It seems to me,” Clary said with an edge to her voice, “that no one the Clave thinks is dead, is ever actually dead. Maybe they should invest in dental records.”
“My father’s dead,” said Jace, the same edge in his voice. “I don’t need dental records to tell me that.”Just like how they're insisting Clary's dad was mundane, they're now insisting that Jace's dad is dead.
Moving on.
The Silent Brother, Jeremiah (...bible name) tries to break the block on Clary's memories. Only he can't, because there is a block there. "What, like she's repressed them?" Jace asks, and Jeremiah says no, it's a spell. They have to go where ALL the silent brothers are, and of-fucking-course it's in New York. They ride through the city in a magical carrige while Jace tells Clary his Tragic Life Story. See, he had this loving father, but these two guys, who are the guys he saw in Luke's apartment, they came in one day and killed his dad. And he watched it. Only he didn't know who those guys were until he saw them in Luke's apartment and now he's not telling Hodge because Hodge would stop him from killing Valentine. Then Jace launches into a long speil about how demons are evil and the only thing keeping the mundanes safe are the Aryans Nephilum like Jace.
Then Clary asks him about reproduction, and we're suddenly one traffic stop away from reproducing the steam-on-the-car-window scene in Titanic.
So they go into the Silent City AKA the Bone City AKA the City of Bone, because we HAD to get our title drop in there, and Brother Jeremiah takes Clary to see all the other Silent Brothers. And they go into the city and it looks, I shit you not, exactly like the Mines of Moria, right before the Balrog shows up and ruins everyone's day:
Clary’s first sight of the Silent City was of row upon row of tall marble arches that rose overhead, disappearing into the distance like the orderly rows of trees in an orchard. The marble itself was a pure, ashy ivory, hard and polished-looking, inset in places with narrow strips of onyx, jasper, and jade. As they moved away from the tunnel and toward the forest of arches, Clary saw that the floor was inscribed with the same runes that sometimes decorated Jace’s skin with lines and whorls and swirling patterns.I want Gandalf-Analogue to scream "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" to a Balrog wearing a swastika while weeping quasi hobbits in the background wave hobbit-weed they grew in their victory garden. Winston Churchill is Gimli. Broromir has a French accent. So does Faromir, but he's the bad-ass awesome French Resistance to his brother's Surrender to Evil.
Too bad I have to go back to this shit.
Oh, hey, all this marble doesn't seem very City-of-Bone-y. What are the arches made of?
Those who die in battle are burned, their ashes used to make the marble arches that you see here. The blood and bone of demon slayers is itself a powerful protection against evil. Even in death, the Clave serves the cause.Clary's first thought is "How exhausting". Mine is "HOW CAN I GET OUT OF HERE WITHOUT ACTUALLY TOUCHING THE WALLS?!? OH GOD I GOT BOROMIR'S ASHES ON ME GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF"
So the Silent Brothers go into Clary's head, and they find the block. Clary halucinates the name Magnus Bane, because otherwise this book would go nowhere, and the Silent Brothers state they cannot break the spell on her mind. It's too powerful. She has to go to Magnus Bane, the guy who put it there.
I have a question: what if Clary had hallucinated a purple people eater? Would she have to go find that?
Moving on.
So Jeremiah leads them out of the city, Clary and Jace flirt over her blood, not kidding at all, and they decide to take a cab out of the magical ash house. End of chapter.
So at the end of this chapter we now know:
-Clary's Mom was married to Valentine
-Clary was told that her Dad's name was Jonathan Christopher, or J.C.
-Jace's dad was murdered
-the murderers are the two men who talked to Uncle Luke
-Uncle Luke was a Shadowhunter and a member of Valentine's circle.
-Mom was a Shadowhunter and a member of Valentine's circle.
-There is a block on Clary's mind.
-Valentine wants the Mortal Cup.
-MAGNUS BANE
Next chapter: We take every mythological thing ever and translate it into Clare's quasi-Christian theology mess. And it works exactly as well as you think.
And I have to say it: this book is termites-in-its-smile bad, all wrapped up in cotton candy, but it's not the worst book I've ever heard of. Captive of Gor made me want to kick things, but it was not the worst book I've ever heard of. The book we're doing after this? Narcissus in Chains? It is now the second worst book I've ever heard of. What is the worst book I've ever heard of?
This is.
I found it last night, and even though it's a self-published book (by a former pro) and even though that technically means I shouldn't touch it out of professional courtesy, it's on the list of things to do. HOLY. SHIT. I almost want to snuggle it but then I'd be dirty, blog readers. I'd be so very very dirty.
